Seventy two Staphylococcus aureus strains previously isolated from cow milk, cow nasal swab, sheep nasal swab, goat nasal swab, human nasal swab and environment were used in this study. The in vitro determination of the oxacillin MIC by agar dilution test results showed 100% susceptibility to 1and 2mg/l of oxacillin whereas the resistance found in 4mg/l in cow nasal swabs samples had (100%), cow milk and human nasal swabs samples had same percentage (45.71%), environmental swabs (44.44%), sheep nasal swabs (14.28%) and the low percentage was showed in goat nasal swabs (0%). There were significant differences (p<0.05) in different samples. The results of DNA amplification of mecA gene in 72 isolates revealed 47 S. aureus isolates were positive for this gene which was identified as methicillin resistant and was absent from the susceptible isolates.

“A Self-Diagnosis Monitoring System based on OBD for Autonomous Vehicles to prevent negligent accidents” proposed in this paper collects various information by using a vehicle’s internal sensors, checks its current condition by processing the collected information, and provides a navigation or a smart phone with the monitoring information for vehicles. The Self-Diagnosis Monitoring System consists of 4 modules. First, a vehicle’s Internal and External Communication Module (IECM) processes the signals received from a vehicle’s various sensors, controls electronic devices and diagnoses their faults by connecting the internal electronic devices to one link, and provides a monitoring device with monitoring information by using Bluetooth. Second, a vehicle’s Internal Information Generation Module (IIGM) collects its internal sensor data based on an OBD interface, and judges its condition by using the collected data. Third, a vehicle’s Information Monitoring Interface Module (IMIM) connects ECU to a terminal to send monitoring data to a smart phone or a navigation terminal. Fourth, a vehicle’s Information Analysis and Monitoring Module(IAMM) accumulates and manages data to change its data to efficient information and provides an environment with a smart phone or a navigation terminal to display monitoring data. Therefore, this paper provides convenience to check a vehicle’s condition easily, reduces logistical cost about a vehicle’s parts, and makes the basic material necessary to analyze an accident cause.

To solve the industrial limitation of recent fungal-based simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (FBSSF), mild soaking pretreated biomass (under 81% colloidal condition) was fermented using modified FBSSF (without irradiation preprocess) by Mucor indicus. When swollen straw was bioconverted by M. indicus for 132 h, the ethanol yield was 60.9% (approximately 10.2 g/L; without losing biomass) of the theoretical maximum. Interestingly, based on economical mass balance, this value was on the similar level as the 72.3% (approximately 11.7 g/L; for 144 h) calculated from fermented straw by previous FBSSF. Furthermore, regarding the presence of inhibitory compounds (for both separation and purification) during the FBSSF, there was almost nothing.

Vitamin D is known especially for its bone effects. Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) is one of the most common rheumatic diseases in childhood. It was the aim of the present study to evaluate vitamin D status in patients with JIA and to assess the relationship between vitamin D levels and disease activity. A total of 44 patients with JIA, diagnosed according to the International League Against Rheumatism (ILAR) criteria and a control group (n=13), matched for age and sex, with no musculoskeletal complaints, were evaluated. Disease activity was assessed, X-ray was performed in clinically active joints, with disease duration more than 6 months and vitamin D level was measured. Significant lower values were obtained for vitamin D in JIA patients compared to the healthy controls, especially in patients with systemic onset JIA and seropositive polyarticular arthritis. 66% of the children with arthritis were included in the group of vitamin D deficiency. Significant correlations were obtained between vitamin D level and the number of active joints, the number of joints with radiological evident lesions and disease duration, respectively. Vitamin D deficiency may be linked to disease severity and duration of the disease in JIA. The mostly affected JIA subtypes in vitamin D deficiency are the systemic and the seropositive polyarticular forms, and, therefore, these disorders should be routinely screened for vitamin D deficiency, and consequently treated. Recommendations for vitamin D supplementation in juvenile arthritis are needed.

Object tracking plays a critical role in computer vision with wide applications. It is a dynamic optimization process based on the temporal information related to the previous frames. Handling partial and total object occlusions have been a challenging task for object tracking. Among nature-inspired meta-heuristics algorithms artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is one of the most powerful optimization methods for solving nonlinear problems. There has been an interest in applying particle swarm optimization (PSO) to object tracking. However, ABC algorithm has seldom been applied to the object tracking. This paper proposes a novel ABC-based tracking technique with adaptive searching windows to greatly enhance tracking accuracy under partial and total occlusions. The work used background subtraction and improved seeded region growing methods to perform image segmentation, build colour histograms and accomplish object detection. The usefulness of the proposed work is verified by experimental results. Moreover, the comparisons with PSO algorithm are made. The results demonstrate that the proposed ABC algorithm is far superior to PSO algorithm in tracking accuracy.

In this study, we developed a hot air drying system using a full-scale belt dryer to which the prepared compression molding apparatus was attached to overcome problems with conventional belt dryers (agglomeration of sludge, dust generation, etc.) To evaluate the drying performance, we installed a hot air feed line for each section and analyzed the processing performance, drying characteristics and operation conditions. As a result, the constant drying rate by total drying time according to the moisture content of the drying object was expressed as the relationship between the initial water content and the drying time of the final critical moisture content and t (hr). If the temperature range, hot air feed rate and conveyor belt speed were set at 180°C, 0.12-0.24 m/s and 20, 30, 40, and 50 RPM respectively, the initial moisture content was reduced as time elapsed and temperature changed. When the hot air feed rate was 0.24 m/s at a conveyor belt speed and temperature of 20 RPM and 180°C, respectively, the moisture content was rapidly reduced after 20 minutes and the removal rate reached 52% after 25 minutes and 72% after 40 minutes. At this time, a decreasing drying rate period was indicated because the moisture migration inside the material did not match the surface moisture evaporation. When the hot air feed rate was 0.12 m/s, the moisture removal rate was 42% after 25 minutes and 64% after 40 minutes. When the conveyor belt speed was 50 RPM and the hot air feed rate was 0.24 m/s, the removal rate was 33% after 25 minutes and 58% after 40 minutes. When the hot air feed rate was 0.12 m/s, the moisture content was 25.7% after 25 minutes and 47.2% after 40 minutes, indicating that the boundary time between drying at a constant rate to drying at a decreased rate was between 30 and 40 minutes. However, further studies are required concerning how to remove moisture by applying the surface energy of the drying object through the injection of hot air if the drying object is contaminated by toxic organic substances.